Wednesday, January 2, 2013

What Happens Tomorrow

By now, if you’ve spent any time catching up on your
post-holidays blog reading, you’ve noticed the “New Year’s Resolution” topic
has trended so much, it’s bordering on overdone. At least, that’s the rub, in
my opinion.

I’ve never been much for New Year’s resolutions. Unless, of
course, the resolution reads something like this:

Resolved: To Never
Make Another New Year’s Resolution.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to accommodate the
other side’s point of view. Goals are good, right? In my ambivalence, I’ve even
written my own lackluster set of New Year’s resolutionsgoals
hopes. I do, after all, have some
things I want to accomplish in my life. If you didn’t read it last year, please
do stop by and take a look by clicking here. I’ll revisit that list—and its concurrent list
of regrets—tomorrow.

But just as I mentioned on the eve of making those
resolutions last year, I can’t help but stop and recall some sage advice from
an ancient book:

Now
listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend
a year there, carry on business and make money.”Why,
you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.

Believe me, I certainly had no
idea, at the middle of last month, what “Tomorrow” had in store for me—for my
family—with the arrival of one brief phone call. How can I make a year’s goals
for family history research when I can’t even comprehend what a family
emergency can do to my notions about one simple twenty-four hour period?

On the other hand, I don’t mean to
discourage the organized approach to setting reasonable—and laudable—goals. I
received one article today which is noteworthy in that regard, and I’d like to
pass it along.

The article, by Jeremy Miller of Toronto’s Sticky Branding
consultancy, speaks to that very issue of New Year’s Resolutions. As he puts
it, resolutions are a marathon, not a sprint.

Taking his cue from the running
world, Jeremy Miller advises, “Start slow, finish fast.” He provides a running
strategy to get you from the starting line to the finish line in your upcoming year, with the
operative word being, finish.

Finish: I like that. There is
nothing more frustrating—and downright demoralizing—than starting out, saying, “I’m
going to…” and then never getting it done.

If you are thinking like me on this
aspect of resolutions, I’d encourage you to head to Sticky Branding’s blog and
read the post for yourself. Whether you apply his concepts to business
applications, as Jeremy Miller does, or to your own projects in genealogical
research—or any other endeavor—these are wise words to tape to your bathroom
mirror and digitally inscribe on the top of each calendar page.

This balancing act called Time
Management is truly a challenge. In any given year, we all get the same amount
of stuff that Time is made of, and it’s up to us to be resourceful in how we
use it. Yet, none of us knows what is in store for us in that next Tomorrow. No
matter how well we prepare and plan, all we can answer for is what we’ve
accomplished Today. Yet, while we do not know what will happen tomorrow, we
certainly must do what we can to convert that future unknown into present.accomplishments.
The balancing act is to grab each Tomorrow and do our best to make the wishes
and dreams of its To-Do List the finished check list of another Today.

If you can do that for a whole year’s
Resolutions, more power to you.

As for me…well, I’ll stick with
conquering Today.

Above left: from the Golden Book of Saint Albans,1380, depicting Richard of Wallingford, Abbot of Saint Albans abbey in Hertfordshire, England, pointing to the clock he gave to the abbey; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

I'm still trying to clarify, in my mind, the difference between true goal-setting (and accomplishment) and this New Year's resolution craze. It is the guilt! And the guilt is so non-productive. You've put your finger on the core of it, Iggy: it is artificial failure.

Jacqi, I totally agree with you. "Life is what happens when you've made other plans." Always true. This year instead of resolutions I just tried a Focus exercise. What is most important to me? Pare it down, set a couple of priorities, limit. Make my peace with the 24-hour day and be ready to adapt to changing circumstances.

And even my "Focus" I take with a grain of salt. We can only do what we can do. Why drive ourselves nuts trying to do it all?

I like what you've written about focus. "Make my peace with the 24-hour day" puts it nicely--and gently reminds us of our human frailty and limits.

To take that idea one step further, what you say calls to mind some life-management books I've read that talk more about exploring one's core mission and placing that, as a guiding motivation, above the task-driven tap dance of time management.

If only I could zero in on what my core mission in life is, perhaps I could better break loose of this tangle of "shoulda" resolutions and to-do lists.

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.